


Ghosts and Gardens

by crystalkei



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 04:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8387110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalkei/pseuds/crystalkei
Summary: A loose Just Like Heaven AU for Halloweek. Bellamy Blake found the perfect apartment in San Francisco. There was just one downside, the ghost roommate.





	

The cost of living in San Francisco was just as bad as everyone said it was. Bellamy had spent weeks trying to find a place to live that would be close to work, be in his budget (which was embarrassingly low), and be something with the perfect couch. The perfect couch was a necessity. His stuff was all in storage and he couldn’t stand to get it out of storage. Not when it held musty memories of his family. 

So when there was a place that wasn’t a true lease, a month to month sublet, but it was in his budget and the couch was just the right combo of soft, but firm, deep enough, and it didn’t feel like he sunk into the floor when he sat on it, well, the month to month sublet was the winner. 

Until the ghost showed up. 

And you know, it really was a good deal. And the ghost wasn’t the scary kind. She was mostly annoying. Pestering him about coasters on the coffee table and changing the channel because Grey’s was on.

“I was watching History Channel!” 

“But it’s Thursday and Grey’s Anatomy is on,” she said, plopping on the couch next to him. (It was weird because he could feel her but she wasn’t corporeal.)

“All you’re gonna do is yell at how much that isn’t how a real hospital works and how there’s too many residents and why are they letting that pediatrician help that old man?”

“It’s not perfect but it’s better than watching that documentary about Mesopotamia again! You have it on the DVR for fuck’s sake!” She threw her hands up and they kind made a whoosh sound as they did a ghost thing through the back of the couch. “Anyway, expand your horizons, we gotta find out if Karev is gonna bang that new intern.” 

“You said that was against the rules.” Bellamy stopped himself from putting his arm around his ghost of a roommate. It’d been a few months and despite her annoying quirks, he was definitely into her… which was awkward for so many reasons. 

“Oh it’s definitely against the rules but this is TV and they do whatever the hell they want.” 

Bellamy’s job was very low impact. He had a very successful career before the accident, designing gardens, he could grow almost anything. But it felt too sad to do that now. Even if it had been two years since his sister and mother had died. Reshelving books at the library though? That was perfect. No connection to his old life and plenty of mindless, easy work. 

Clarke, the ghost, had other ideas though. 

“So you’re a librarian?” she asked, popping out of nowhere while he was slurping his noodle take out. 

“No, I’m a clerk. You have to have like a degree in library science to be even an assistant librarian.” He spilled some of the broth on the floor in his hasty need to put the bowl down.

“You need to mop that up, if you leave it, the floor might warp,” she said and he rolled his eyes. “Do you want to _ be _ a librarian?” 

“Nope.” 

“Are you one of those guys with no career in mind, just floating from sublet to sublet, spilling soup on perfectly good floors?”

“I’m sorry, are you, a ghost, a dead person, judging  _ my _ life choices?” he asked, grabbing a couple paper towels to clean up the spill. 

Clarke scoffed and shook her head. “I’m not dead.” 

“You literally appeared out of thin air.” 

“No I didn’t,” she argued. 

“What were you doing immediately before you started berating my job?” 

She put her hands on her hips and took a breath, she was about to give him a talking to but she stopped short, tilted her head, and opened and closed her mouths several times before pouting. It was very cute but she was super dead so Bellamy tried to ignore that. 

“I was…” Her shoulders slumped. “I can’t remember. But I’m not dead. I remember that.” 

“Well, since you’re so sure,” he deadpanned.

“I’m not!” 

“Not sure or not dead?” 

“Maybe you’re going crazy,” Clarke suggested. 

Bellamy grabbed a beer from the fridge and breezed past her towards the couch. “I’m not the ghost.” 

“But you’re really chill about there being a ghost in my-” she stopped and rephrased. “Your apartment. You’re definitely the crazy one.” 

“Listen, I’d be happy to live here forever, in this very affordable sublet, with the most perfect couch, and the beautiful view of the city, even if you died here, which is why I assume, this apartment was vacant and affordable.”

“You think I’m haunting you because the apartment is so nice?”

“Are you really haunting me?” Bellamy asked, putting his feet up on the coffee table, which he knew she hated. She batted at his legs and Bellamy chuckled. It felt cold but her hands just went right through him. “I’d go with mildly inconveniencing me.” 

“Well, buddy, I can make it a fully fledged haunting if this isn’t fun enough for you!” She huffed and some strands of her hair moved out of her face because of her breath. He wondered how that all worked if she couldn’t affect other stuff but apparently she could affect her own self.

“Aren’t you admitting to being a ghost by that statement?” he said, flipping the tv on. 

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m not a ghost. I’m not dead!” 

“Okay, sure. But I definitely think someone murdered you and you’re stuck here.”

“Why would someone murder me? Everyone loves me!” 

“Did you go to your funeral and watch them eulogize you? Do you know for sure?”

“No, because I didn’t have a funeral because I’m not dead!” As she stomped her foot on the last word some lightbulbs in the kitchen burst. 

“You just made lightbulbs break, which, by the way, now I have to go get new ones, thanks for that, the vaulted ceilings mean I have to borrow a ladder too.” 

“There’s a ladder in the shed on the roof,” she said, without thought. “What if I’m dreaming?”

“What if you’re dreaming? What if  _ I’m _ dreaming?” Bellamy said, getting up and opening the window where the fire escape was. 

“You’re willing to accept that you’re dreaming but not that you’re crazy?”

Bellamy shrugged. “Yes.” 

Clarke sighed. “Alright. What else you got?”

“In theories for why you’re here? What kinda unfinished business do you have?”

“I’m not dead!” she shouted, as she followed him up the fire escape to the roof. “I mean theories of how I might be here but also not dead.” 

“I once saw a horror movie about a kid that could astral project himself, maybe you’re doing that?”

“Why would I be projecting myself here, with you?” she asked, offended. 

“Because I’m ruggedly handsome and your ideal type of man,” he said with a wicked grin. 

“Oh please,” she said, dismissive, and he tried to ignore that rejected feeling. She was a ghost, he shouldn’t be upset about it. 

He made it to the roof and looked around. The view was even better than the apartment, Bellamy wasn’t sure why this was the first time he’d ever come up here, but with all the space, he actually started to feel inspired. There were some pots on a couple of cinder blocks and he was itching to do something with them. 

“Does this come with the apartment? Or is it communal space?” he asked Clarke, she was hovering right behind him and when he turned he caught a shiver from passing through part of her arm.

“It’s mine.” 

“So it’s just for the apartment, my apartment.” 

“No, my apartment,” Clarke corrected him. 

He didn’t care. He was too excited. 

“Where are you going?” she called after him but he was already back in the apartment grabbing his coat. 

By the time he’d filled the rooftop with Japanese wisteria, honeysuckle, zinnias, plumeria, and even built a gazebo, Clarke was impressed. It was a great feeling because he’d never impressed her and always wanted to. He wasn’t sure what that meant, that he wanted to impress a ghost. 

It took a solid month and she’d just sit up there while he did it. They talked about the plants, she talked about how she used to sit at the hospital on her breaks and meditate, thinking about a garden she’d seen in a magazine once. She told him how she worked too much and missed out on everything. He told her about his mother and sister dying in the car accident and how he couldn’t really get his life back on track after losing his family. 

When he worked late into the night on the garden because he just couldn’t stop, Clarke talked about her difficult relationship with her mother and Bellamy pointed out constellations, telling her the stories behind each of them. 

“You should do this for a living,” she said, when the last stone in the path was laid down. 

“I did do this for a living.” He was shy about it. 

Clarke sighed. “I wish I could touch them.” Her hand hovered over a succulent, not even a flower, but the bright purple succulent he’d potted for the french bistro table.

“I wish you could, too.” 

But he really he wished he could touch her. She caught his eye and he couldn’t look away. There was something there that he didn’t want to miss. Finally, Clarke looked down, breaking the spell.

“It’s Thursday, we’re gonna miss Grey’s Anatomy,” Bellamy said, tilting his head towards the fire escape. 

Bellamy washed his hands on his way through the kitchen before he met her at the couch, she’d just appeared there. He turned on the TV and the screen blared with the promo for the local news that came on after Grey’s. 

“Area woman in coma to be taken off life support tomorrow, more at 10,” the dramatic broadcaster said, a photo of Clarke flashed on the screen. 

Bellamy dropped his soda. It missed the couch and landed on the carpet. 

“Was that me?” Clarke screeched. 

“I...I…” he stuttered. “I think it was.” 

His heart leapt. He turned to Clarke who must have been freaking out because she said nothing about the soda all over the carpet. 

“Told you I wasn’t dead!” she shouted, a finger pointed harshly in his direction. 

“You’re not dead!” He smiled too wide, it felt out of place on his own face. 

“I’m not dead!” she said, joyous and relieved all in one breath. 

But Bellamy remembered the soda on the carpet and the rest of the headline. He ran for the paper towels and came back nervous. 

“But you will be, tomorrow,” he muttered, sopping up the soda. 

“Not if we go to the hospital tonight.” Clarke looked determined. 

“How do we get you back in your body?”

“I don’t know, I’ll think of something. Clean that up and let’s go!” 

But nothing worked. She couldn’t just jump back into her body and she couldn’t make herself wake up. She read her chart and looked at the monitors and everything looked wrong. She knew of patients like this and they didn’t wake up. 

She sat, defeated, on the uncomfortable sofa in her hospital room and tried to hold back the tears. 

“I thought this was it. I thought I could just make it happen, and I can’t.” 

Bellamy came to sit next to her, feeling useless. 

“Maybe it’s true love’s kiss?” he joked. 

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, feeling a weird tingling all over. 

“What do you have to lose at this point?” He figured, why not? Everything about this was bizarre, and he’d wanted to really touch her for months. 

“Go for it,” Clarke said, unenthusiastic. 

“That’s quite the invitation, I didn’t know I was so repulsive.” 

“Shut up,” she said, annoyed. “Just go do it so we can think up another plan.”

It worked. It was like birds singing and the sun rising (which was just a matter of the time of day but Bellamy took it as a sign) and it felt like being in one of his gardens. It felt like home.

And she woke up. She sputtered and coughed, her ghost was gone and she was looking up at him but it wasn’t like he expected. She didn’t recognize him and that hurt. Like a clawing, aching, stone settling into his gut. 

Soon the room was swarming with nurses. He was almost arrested because he wasn’t supposed to be there. Her mother came in, crying. 

So he slipped out, he took his broken heart over a ghost that had been in his apartment for months home. Back to the garden. Back to the comfy couch. 

It was too quiet and since he’d had a ghost he hadn’t bothered to make any friends. Now everything felt pointless. Bellamy thought he’d made progress in the city, moving on from his sister and mother’s death but now he was right back at square one. 

The next day when he got the call from the realtor that the end of the month would be the end of his lease, he decided to snap out of it. She didn’t remember him, that was fine, but she’d been in a coma for months. Clarke was coming back to their apartment… her apartment, and he could at least fix one thing for her. 

He cleaned like wild. Scrubbing the floors on his hands and knees, dusting the baseboards, coasters on every surface. Then he shifted his attention to the garden. Before she’d told him that she worked too much and meditated with the image of the garden, so he was going to make the rooftop escape even better. 

More flowers, a water feature, a better stone path, and a swing in the gazebo. 

So when the day that he’d hand over his keys and she’d come back came, he couldn’t help but force some overlap. He wanted to see her one last time. 

“What’s this?” she asked, startling him from potting one last juniper sapling. “This wasn’t here before, but… it feels so familiar.” 

She was alone and she looked angelic, walking into the gazebo to sit down on the swing. 

“It’s a garden, so you can relax and maybe not throw yourself into work so much.” 

Clarke looked at him and it felt like she was searching for something. He gulped. 

“You did this?”

He nodded. “It’s Thursday though, don’t spend too much time up here or you’ll miss Grey’s.”

She smiled at him. “You watch Grey’s Anatomy? You don’t look like the type.” 

“Didn’t used to be. But my friend got me hooked on it,” he said. “She’s a doctor and she’d shout at the TV about all the ways Seattle Grace broke the rules.” 

“I do that,” Clarke whispered. 

“Yep,” Bellamy said. 

He couldn’t help himself, he sat next to her and thankfully she didn’t move. She just turned to look at him, trying to figure him out. 

“You look like a ghost that once haunted me,” he teased. 

“Why would anyone haunt you,” she asked, leaning in just a little, like she was hoping he’d kiss her. 

“Because I’m ruggedly handsome and your ideal type of man,” Bellamy said, closing the gap and kissing her. 

She gasped and he panicked. He pulled back to see her shaking her head. 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“I remember, Bellamy, I remember!” she said, smiling and throwing her arms around his neck. “I wasn’t dead! I’m not dead now! And you’re here!” 

He felt her words against the skin of his neck and he wrapped his arms around her. Holding her for the first time. 

Really, he would have been fine being roommates with a ghost forever, but this was better. So much better.  


End file.
